Search Within Topic:

All Education Commentary

With the Supreme Court set to rehear Fisher v. University of Texas, which concerns race-based affirmative action policies, a new report from the American Council on Education shows that the previous ruling did little to change colleges' admissions policies. TCF senior fellow Richard Kahlenberg writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that the report's findings may help lead to a different ruling this time around:

In short, colleges didn’t take the ruling very seriously. The headline finding is that "when asked directly whether the Fisher ruling affected their admissions or enrollment management practices, only 13 percent of institutions responded in the affirmative."

This new information is deeply problematic for supporters of affirmative action because the nonchalant response to the earlier Fisher decision may well embolden conservative justices — including swing vote Anthony Kennedy — to make a more definitive statement about racial preferences in the Fisher II case.

With a Supreme Court rehearing of Fisher v. University of Texas looming, Harvard is moving to delay a high-profile lawsuit alleging that the university discriminates against Asian-American students. The Harvard Crimson spoke with TCF senior fellow Rick Kahlenberg about Fisher.

“The fact that the Supreme Court took this case back is bad news for the proponents of affirmative action,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a liberal think tank.

The Supreme Court's decision in Fisher v. University of Texas has the potential to impact admissions policies at universities across the country. The Memphis Commercial Appeal spoke with TCF fellow Halley Potter in an article on how a ruling would affect universities in Tennessee.

Halley Potter, a fellow at The Century Foundation in New York, said the flagship universities in nearly all of the states have found ways to promote racial, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity by making systematic changes, including accepting the top 10 percent of students from all high schools, which several states do. She notes that some colleges give more consideration to applicants from single-parent homes, or consider neighborhood demographics and parent- education levels.

[...]

“The most effective results happen when you take a variety of approaches and combine them together. There is not a silver bullet,” Potter said.

The Supreme Court's decision to rehear Fisher v. University of Texas has the potential to further limit race-based admissions practices at public universities. TCF senior fellow Rick Kahlenberg spoke with the New York Times about the struggles public universities face when trying to maintain a level of diversity equal to their private peers, who are allowed to consider race more fully.

The state bans on considering race have struck hard at elite public universities seeking to maintain a pool of minority students. The three most selective institutions in the states with bans — the University of Michigan; the University of California, Los Angeles; and the University of California, Berkeley — have all lost ground in diversity since their state bans went into effect.

“Those three compete on a national level with universities like Stanford and Harvard,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, the author of the Century Foundation report. “They’re in an impossible situation, since they have to play by one set of rules and the private universities have a different set of rules.”

The ongoing case of Fisher v. University of Texas will be reheard by the Supreme Court to determine if higher education institutions will be able to consider race as a factor in admissions decisions. TCF senior fellow Rick Kahlenberg argues that class is a viable alternative that can be used to produce a diversified student body that will be free of racial or socioeconomic discrimination.

"...schools have moved toward class-based models in order in anticipation of attacks on affirmative action and argues that if affirmative action remains, colleges will simply favor privileged students of color instead of low-income students across the board."

Education

Most K-12 education reforms are about trying to make "separate but equal" schools for rich and poor work well. The results of these efforts have been discouraging. The Century Foundation looks at ways to integrate public schools by economic status through public school choice. At the higher education level, we examine ways to open the doors of selective and non-selective institutions to students of modest means.